What does it mean to win a presidential debate, anyway?
News networks tend to promote the debates as if they were cage matches, but they are, supposedly, meant to inform voters. Talking heads tend to focus on the "who won" question because it's an easy way to fill airtime with discussion, however vapid and uninformed: You don't need to know anything to talk about Candidate X repeating herself or Candidate Y coming off as aggressive. But it's thoughtless to accept this as the appropriate context for post-debate discussion.
I mean, if I say that a particular candidate won a debate, I could mean that:
- I'm a strong supporter of that candidate who would rate him or her as the winner in any case
- I agreed more with that candidate
- The candidate put on a more accurate performance based on what I expect a candidate to do in debates
- The candidate made better arguments
- I plan to vote for that candidate
...and so on. This is rarely specified, but even if it were there's a prior consideration: Why does it make sense to treat debates as adversarial contests? What exactly is being contested? If the results of the election are not the benchmark for deciding the winner, what else could be?
Maybe it's better to be cynical about it, and accept that televised presidential debates are a half-witted spectacle conceived by journalism's worst minds, chiefly aimed at an audience of cheer-leading partisans and
slack-jawed "swing voters." I don't know if the debates have any real effect on how people vote, but I'm confident that we would be better off if they became as much of a relic as the whistle-stop tour.
